Forlag: Penguin Random House (Storbritannia, USA, Canada, Irland, Australia, India, New Zealand, Sør-Afrika)
(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The author Nimko Ali (b. 1983) is a British-Somali activist. Together with British-Somali psychotherapist Leyla Hussein, she is the founder and leader of Daughters of Eve, a voluntary organization working to protect young girls from genital mutilation – Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). They have managed to get FGM classified as child abuse in the UK. Ali also helped launch The Five Foundation, a global coalition that fights against FGM at the international level.
With Rude Ali opens the dialogue around the taboo female genital – the vagina – and everything associated with it: menstruation, orgasm, pregnancy and menopause. She discusses them darkness the pages of these themes by sharing personal stories and experiences of women around the world – from all walks of life. Ali describes it this way: "It's not very British to talk about fannies, it's not very polite, in fact, it's downright rude."
Shame
Historically, women have not had access to knowledge to understand how their own vagina works. Talking about the vagina, or at all calling its genitalia "vagina," is shameful. Therefore, the vagina has been given many nicknames, such as pussy, mouse, flower and so on. Unfortunately, many of the nicknames are also curse words.
Talking about the vagina, or at all calling its genitalia "vagina," is shameful.
The exact and complete anatomy of the clitoris was not mapped until 1998 by Australian urologist Helen O'Connell. Since the clitoris does not have a reproductive function but is only a source of sexual pleasure, it has been unattractive to many medical practitioners. But over 50 percent of the world's population has a clitoris, and they all go through the physical and mental challenges associated with being a woman. Clitoris is the key to female orgasm, as about 75 percent of women state that they rely on the stimulation of the clitoris to achieve orgasm.
Cruel practice
Ali is one of 200 million women worldwide (figures from UNICEF in 2016) who have been exposed to FGM. She was no more than seven years old when she had her clitoris cut off with a razor blade and parts of the vulva sewn together. Only a small hole for urination, menstruation, sex and childbirth remained open. This practice is still carried out in 27 African countries as well as Indonesia, Iraq, Kurdistan and Yemen. FGM is about social control – controlling women's sexual pleasure.
Women are often initiators of this practice because they fear the social exclusion of daughters and grandchildren if they are not sexually assaulted. The origins of the practice are uncertain, but sources say FGM originated before Islam: Hieroglyphs have been seen from ancient Egyptian coffins showing women being sexually assaulted.
Today we know that FGM leads to infections, problems with urination and menstruation, chronic pain, cyst development, sterility, complications during childbirth and bleeding that can cause fatal outcomes. FGM has absolutely no health benefits, unlike the male circumcision within Islam and Judaism with its positive hygienic effect.
The point is that the sexual pleasure of women is suppressed, with or without FGM, and is considered a bonus and not the goal of the sexual act. Women are objectified when it comes to sex. Ali writes: "We are fucked and never pleasured. »
Simulates orgasm
Many women pretend to have an orgasm to satisfy their partner. A survey of 2000 people in Europe and the United States from 2017 shows that 68 percent of heterosexual women and 59 percent of lesbians simulate orgasms with their partner. When it comes to men, 25 percent of the heterosexual and 48 percent of the gay orgasm simulate.
The truth is that women get the best orgasms through masturbation, even though the path to the discovery of their own body has not been easy. In religious texts, masturbation is a hot topic. The Bible does not forbid masturbation, but the Talmud does, since it leads to "unclean thoughts" (there is nothing about female masturbation). In the Qur'an, married men can masturbate each other, while individual masturbation is perceived as haram (prohibited and morally reprehensible). In ancient Greece, women used bread sticks lubricated with olive oil as dildos. Later, dildos and vibrators were invented to "cure hysterical women".
A bloody affair
Every month, "Aunt Red" comes to visit most women, unless you have abdominal complications that cause an irregular menstrual cycle, are menopause, or have left it behind you. Menstruation is not a painless and simple matter; it involves several days of pain – and the cycle is a hormonal roller coaster that culminates in an impractical, bloody affair.
Before menstruation (bleeding) we have the ovulation, which occurs about 14 days before menstruation, where the unfertilized, mature egg cell is ejected from the ovaries. Some women feel physical pain when the egg loosens. Then comes premenstrual syndrome (PMS), which lasts for about six days. PMS can cause emotional and physical symptoms such as acne, sore breasts, bloating, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, low back pain, muscle pain, mood swings, headaches, fatigue, sleep problems, stress, anxiety and lack of sex drive.
In some cases, PMS is mistaken for endometriosis, which is a painful condition in which the tissues of the uterus grow outside the uterus and become cysts. You do not know the reasons why it occurs and it takes several years to diagnose, partly because "women are supposed to suffer in silence".
In addition to the disorders during the menstrual cycle every month from puberty to menopause, we have the "disorder" pregnancy or pregnancy, where we voluntarily, in some cases involuntarily, risk both our own and the child's life (worst case) for up to 42 weeks.
In other words, being a woman is not easy, but it is nothing new. Women are oppressed by nature, and unfortunately we cannot change that. The oppression that we can change, on the other hand, is that of the Patriarchate.
